


Despite What You've Been Told

by Gourmet



Category: Welcome to Night Vale
Genre: Drabble Collection, Fluff, General Night Vale Oddities, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-09-21
Updated: 2013-09-21
Packaged: 2017-12-27 06:35:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,295
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/975604
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gourmet/pseuds/Gourmet
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A few tropes!prompts that I was requested to fill for Cecil/Carlos! The filled prompts in question, so far, are:</p><p>Accidental Baby Acquisition<br/>Handcuffed Together</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Accidental Baby Acquisition

Carlos was a little ashamed of himself for actually being surprised. After all, he’d been in Night Vale for over a year now, and that made him a certified member of the town. No, literally. A certificate had been slipped under his door in a hot, black envelope several months ago with instructions for framing and proper registration. This, however, was more than he felt prepared to deal with.

Swallowing his panic, he dialed Cecil’s number for a third time and paced behind his couch, shooting nervous glances towards his front door. Usually, Carlos would absorb the details of any oddity Night Vale presented him with, and he would then channel those details through a filter of scientific curiosity and exploration. Thus far, it had turned out to be a useful method of preserving his sense of reality (mostly) and sanity (hopefully). But loathe though he was to admit it, Night Vale had finally thrown before him something he did not want to involve himself with.

"Carlos!" Cecil exclaimed by way of greeting after the fourth call was finally answered. "Silly, darling Carlos, you know I can’t answer my phone during the show," he chided.

"C-Cecil. Cecil, I need your help," Carlos said, hoping he could find a way to express the urgency of the situation to his boyfriend. He didn’t usually have much luck with that, convincing Cecil to see something dangerous or physically impossible as a cause for alarm, but he sincerely hoped this would be the day he managed. "There’s a giant bird on my doorstep, and it-"

"A bird? What kind of bird?" Cecil asked. "Maybe I can help you decipher its meaning before the weather is over."

Carlos took a breath to keep from snapping. “No, Cecil, that’s not the important part,” he insisted. Yes, the bird was terrifyingly large, and there were definitely blood stains on its feet and beak. And okay, the bird’s eyes had been a different color every time he’d risked peaking out at it, and every time it spotted him it let out a shriek that sounded like twisting metal. But the bird was definitely not the important part. “It…it put a baby in front of my door.”

Well, there was a baby and a collection of balloons in bright blue colors proclaiming “IT’S A BOY!” and “NICE SHOOTING, DAD!” but really. The baby.

"You were visited by the Stork!?" Cecil cried from the other end of the phone, and Carlos pressed his eyes shut behind his glasses when he heard the absolutely delighted tone in Cecil’s voice.

"That is not a stork," Carlos protested, rubbing a hand under his glasses and over his face.

Cecil tsked from his end of the line. “Of course it is, Carlos. Only Storks can deliver babies - everyone knows that. But oh, Carlos! Is it a girl or a boy? Oh! Don’t tell me! I want it to be a surprise!”

Another metallic shriek cut through the wall, and Carlos jumped back when he saw the Stork staring into his window with eyes that had gone bright and orange since he last saw them. “Cecil, what am I supposed to do with the baby…?”

"Well, you’ll probably want to start by getting a cradle and formula, but we can make a list when I get off work! Oh, I have to get back, but if you have a leopard skin pelt of any kind, those are just great for first day swaddling."

"Cecil- Cecil! Don’t hang up!" Carlos protested, hissing out a string of curses when the line went dead, and he could hear the last notes of the Weather wrapping up from his radio in the kitchen when he finally forced himself to cross the living room and open the door again. A noise like a car crash bellowed out of the Stork when he knelt carefully down to pick up the basket left there, but that at least seemed to be the key to getting the creature to fly away. And the baby - a breathing, human (from what he could see at least) baby - slept right through the noise, only starting to wriggle in his blue blankets when Carlos stepped back in the house and set the basket very carefully on his kitchen counter.

"-will never believe what I found out during the weather!" Cecil was gushing over the radio, and Carlos honestly couldn’t say whether he was comforted by his boyfriend’s enthusiasm or not. "Carlos - perfect, paternal Carlos - is a new daddy!"


	2. Handcuffed Together

"Listeners, have I got news for you!"

Carlos sighed as silently as he was able. He liked Cecil’s show, honestly he did, but he had work to do, too. And the few hours Cecil had conceded to spend in the lab with him that morning really hadn’t been enough time to do anything. Cecil insisted that things would go back to normal “Oh, in a day or two,” but Carlos knew better than to afford any logical timeline to anything in Night Vale.

"Carlos and I are celebrating our first anniversary!" Cecil informed his microphone, and despite himself, Carlos smiled a little at the fond, almost dopey sort of smile on his boyfriend’s face. That was not Cecil’s typical demeanor, not exactly, but it was cute and, of course, flattering to see the way Cecil was turned soft and sweet by talking about him.

And despite Carlos’s efforts to sit as quietly as he could, to allow the show to be performed as normally as possible, Cecil lifted his hand, and Carlos followed suit, shaking his head a little when Cecil shook his wrist and rattled the chain connecting them. “We awoke with the town-mandated Anniversary Handcuffs already in place. And listeners, if I may be so bold as to say, it really is much easier to share a bed on the eve of your anniversary. Far less troublesome to than being dragged out of your bed, and home, and down the streets while your handcuffs adjust to the proper length.”

Carlos’s eyebrows winged up. That happened? No wonder Cecil had been so insistent on staying over the night before. He’d seen one or two people in the last two years who appeared to be getting dragged through the streets, but he’d always been too caught up in some other project to devote any time for that. At least now he could check it off his list.

"Maybe we can finally get that interview, listeners! I’m sure there’s a lot of great, science-y things going on that we could discuss!"

Carlos looked up quickly and shook his head. No way! He couldn’t put his finger on it exactly, but any time Cecil had mentioned bringing him in to talk on his show, a sort of stage fright Carlos didn’t even realize he was harboring seized him.

Cecil glanced sideways at him from behind his glasses and smiled. He pulled his left arm into his side until Carlos’s arm was pulled out and the wheels under his seat rolled him forward, knee bumping against Cecil’s thigh. He didn’t, however, launch into some form of interview the way Carlos had been expecting. Instead, he laced the fingers of his left hand through the fingers on Carlos’s right and went about the rest of the show with only a few little outbursts about Carlos’s hair and presence in the booth. Nothing that wasn’t expected.

Carlos smiled a little himself and shifted, resting his head against Cecil’s shoulder. The handcuffs definitely made going about the day infinitely more difficult than it had to be. But he had to admit that in that kind of horrendously weird way only Night Vale could manage, it certainly ensured they spent their anniversary together, and it was…well, kind of nice.

**Author's Note:**

> If you're on tumblr, you can find me there at [snowfell](http://snowfell.tumblr.com)! And if, for whatever reason, you'd like to see more of these, feel free to request one! The list is [here](http://snowfell.tumblr.com/post/61646860171/tropes)!


End file.
